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TOO EXPENSIVE

Disasters will happen. Murphy’s Law applies. An updated DR plan is like insurance, its benefits outweigh the costs of not having it. Some time you’ll need it, and you’ll be glad you had it!click to learn more

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$1,166.67

is the average cost of downtime per minute5

What's Your Disaster Recovery Plan?

The buck stops here. How do you feel when the lights first go out? Relief? An amusing distraction from the daily grind? In the dark office, you slowly come to realize that the issue is more serious. People are looking for direction. What is going on? Should I go home? The lights stay out. There must be a calm way to deal with this. Where’s your operations manager? Then the lights go back on; your PC’s rebooting. Phew! Catastrophe averted! Luckily, no one is hurt and there is no major damage. Business-as-usual within an hour!

It could have been worse. It was just a warning shot across the bow. No good back-up process; no written plan of attack. I’ve been there. Actually, I was the guy in-charge when the lights went out on August 14, 2003. The staff scurried home; the business shut down. Were other firms still working? We certainly weren’t, and it wouldn’t be good if we were on our own. That was the uncomfortable issue, to say the least. After that, I learned; my business learned. We were not going to be last, or caught unprepared again; we were going to have an option!

Not necessarily a “perfect plan”, but a plan nonetheless, with some people and hardware to back it up. The plan was something for us to use in moving forward and taking concrete action. We needed to take stock of what we had. We inventoried; we prioritized. It was a little stressful, but mostly eye opening. Focus turned to ubiquitous services, such as e-mail, document management and wireless devices, then on to communications and a recovery site. We learned a lot along the way, about cross-training staff, meshing the network, consolidating licenses, simplifying storage, documenting procedures, monitoring incidents better and negotiating good contracts. We cleaned house. Which is what everyone needs to do now and then, right? And that’s why I like doing Disaster Recovery work, because it touches everything! I’ve seen it up close, and that’s why I can help you.

To better understand what you need to do, consider the big picture. Figuring out your disaster recovery strategy is the beginning of an on-going process. In its simplest form, it’s a three-phase perpetual program. Depending on your circumstances, you may end-up re-assessing your situation and repeating these phases.